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What to Know about the John Deere Classic Course for PGA DFS

The PGA Course Breakdown offers data-driven analysis for each week’s slate, using the Fantasy Labs Trends Tool and metrics to highlight stats for the upcoming tournament.

The 3M Open had an epic finish with Matthew Wolff getting his first PGA Tour victory. On deck is the John Deere Classic. With The Open Championship just around the corner, the field is exceptionally weak for this tournament but packed with a fun group of young players.

Let’s dive in.

The Course

As always, I back-tested various metrics in our PGA Models to find out those that have been the most valuable at TPC Deere Run. Per our Trends tool, here’s how the top 20% of golfers in various metrics have done at this course (in Plus/Minus valuation).

Historically, this course has yielded averages of 55.22 DraftKings points and a +7.11 Plus/Minus with a 50% Consistency Rating to the field.

Metrics that tested with at least a +2.00 Plus/Minus:

Long-Term Par-5 Scoring: +11.68

Long-Term Birdies: +9.76

Recent Par-3 Scoring: +5.95

Recent Greens in Regulation: +5.38

Long-Term Driving Distance: +4.53

Long-Term Par-4 Scoring: +3.45

Long-Term Eagles: +3.39

Recent Adjusted Round Score: +3.16

Recent Par-5 Scoring: +3.08

Long-Term Tournament Count: +2.78

Long-Term Missed Cuts: +2.72

Long-Term Scrambling: +2.57

Long-Term Par-3 Scoring: +2.53

Course Adjusted Round Score: +2.36

Long-Term Adjusted Round Score: +2.16

Recent Missed Cuts: +2.12

TPC Deere Run is a par-71, 7,268-yard course. It’s one of the easiest course on tour as last year’s winner, Michael Kim shot -27, and the previous four winners before that shot between -18 and -22.

It’s no surprise that par-5 scoring backtested as the highest metric for Deere Run. Per Fantasy National, the three par 5s all have birdie rates of 37% or higher. In fact, the 561-yard No. 2 par 5 has historically had a birdie rate of 50.8% and an eagle rate of 4.1%.

So, targeting golfers who excel at par 5s will be imperative this week, especially if they have enough to get to these par 5s in two because No. 17 also has an eagle rate (2.8%) just slightly behind No. 2.

With another birdie-fest on tap for this week, targeting golfers who rank favorably in birdie or better scoring should be another focus this week. This shows up in the back-testing with birdie-scoring back-testing as the second-highest metric, and eagle-scoring slightly further down the list.

While this course is lined with trees, golfers find the fairway here 72% of the time, which is 12% higher than your average Tour event (Fantasy National), so the tree-lined fairways shouldn’t be much of an issue most of the time. It’s a similar story with greens in regulation as golfers are hitting greens at a 71% clip, compared to 65% for an average event.

And per Data Golf, Strokes Gained: Putting and Strokes Gained: Approach were among the metrics that have shown to be slightly more important than your average event. However, I’d place more emphasis on Strokes Gained: Approach since putting can be streaky.